President Donald Trump speaks outside the Oval Office at the White House on Monday, April 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
The Trump administration broke federal law when the Department of Homeland Security reduced staffing at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a federal judge ruled this week.
In a 32-page order resolving cross-motions for summary judgment, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, concluded that DHS had “unlawfully usurped the authority” of FEMA to make its own personnel decisions during workforce reductions carried out throughout 2025.
The initial lawsuit was substantially wider-ranging. In April 2025, a coalition of unions led by the American Federation of Government Employees, or AFGE, challenged what it described as President Donald Trump’s “unconstitutional dismantling of the federal government.”
As the litigation unfolded through successive filings and months of proceedings, the case was narrowed to more targeted claims, with the court separating agency-specific disputes for individual consideration.
Illston specifically found that DHS improperly took over FEMA’s authority to renew hires in its Cadre of On-Call Response/Recovery Employees program, known as CORE. The court described CORE workers as “full-time employees hired for two- to four-year terms to work across disasters rather than being hired for a particular disaster.”
“DHS acted unlawfully in usurping FEMA’s authority over its personnel, and FEMA [through a former official] acted unlawfully in acquiescing to DHS’s exertion of authority over FEMA’s CORE renewals and staffing numbers,” the order states.
Several key circumstances have changed since the layoffs and other alleged personnel violations began in the sprawling case.
Most notably, the administration abandoned a leaked proposal that would have cut FEMA’s workforce by 50%. After the plan became public, the Trump administration retreated from the idea altogether.
Against that backdrop, the court indicated some reluctance.
“The Court agrees with defendants that some of the relief plaintiffs seek is quite broad and no longer seems to fit with the facts as they have unfolded over the months of this litigation,” the order goes on. “In particular, since January 22, 2026, FEMA is no longer systematically non-renewing the COREs…At the same time, the record reflects that DHS continues to usurp FEMA’s authority to renew CORE terms and that COREs are currently being renewed for shorter terms (six months to one year) than the historical two-year, or more recent four-year, terms.”
Still, the judge also took the government to task for other behavior.
“The factual findings at this stage must be viewed against the backdrop that plaintiffs have been hamstrung in their ability to prove their claims, and the Court in its ability to evaluate the claims, by defendants’ intentional deletion of relevant Signal messages,” the order goes on.
The court elaborates here:
[T]he Court has found that high-level officials at FEMA and DHS communicated regarding FEMA and CORE staffing over the Signal messaging app, on their personal cell phones, using auto-delete timers that the officials themselves set, often deleting messages within one to four weeks. As a result, Signal messages from the time period most relevant to the DHS/FEMA claims…have been deleted and cannot be recovered. The Court has found that the deleted messages were relevant to this litigation, that plaintiffs have been prejudiced by the irrecoverable loss of these messages, and that defendants…acted with the intent to deprive plaintiffs of the use of the Signal chat messages in this litigation.
“This begs the question: if FEMA supervisors and the FEMA CHCO did not recommend a 50% staffing cut, where did that number come from?” the judge muses before speculating about the discarded plan.
In terms of relief, due to the changing facts on the ground and the decided lack of information, the court directed the parties to meet and confer to try to determine a path forward.
“Should the parties be unable to reach agreement, they shall file a joint statement on what relief remains outstanding, no later than October 9, 2026,” Illston goes on. “The Court will then issue a ruling on relief forthwith.”
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